THE POSSIBILITY SPHERE
by
Albert Pesso
The possibility sphere is not only relevant in psychomotor. It really talks about what the stance is to be a
therapist of any kind. But we'll focus on how to use the possibility sphere from the psychomotor
viewpoint, how it's applicable.
It shows up in relationships and it's felt subliminally on first contact with you as the therapist when the
client first comes into your presence. So it's part of your personality. However I consciously turn it on
when I begin to work and I've begun to know the elements in it so I can talk somewhat about the
elements that are in the possibility sphere. I have to confess right now I haven't done my homework, to
stop and write all these down beforehand, but I'm depending on my living of this material to make it
become present again.
Why I know that I turn on the possibility sphere is that if someone starts to go into a structure before I
have become aware that they think it's now the time for a structure contract, I'm suddenly left startled
and unable to make use of any of the material that they've touched on from the beginning because I
didn't turn it on. So it's a definite "on" switch.
And I don't like to turn it on until somebody's in a structure because it's costly. It costs energy. And I
don't like to be working that hard unless I have to. So it's not something that simply happens. It's
something that you do. It takes energy and concentration -- that’s the first thing. And the first thing I
think of now . . . it consists of emptiness. So that means that you have to be, in a way, empty or you
have to expand that part of your concentration and your consciousness that is going to be in the service
of the client, and make it empty.
So even though it's of you, this tool we're developing is of you, it has to be as close to l00% in the service
of the client, and not in your service. So none of your needs and none of your self-concerns have to do
with it. You have to find some way, regardless of the distress or connectedness you have to your own
present issues, to still present them with this empty thing. In fact, it can be calming to your own distress
to turn on your possibility sphere in the service of others. So it can be a way of put away your own stuff.
However, in order to be a therapist, you have to stand in the center of your own truth, because your
major task is to help them be in the center of their truth. So if you're split in the act of putting away your
own stuff and still not stay able to stay integrated, then they're going to feel that split in the possibility
sphere and that inauthenticity in the possibility sphere. So if your own stuff rises to the point where it's
going to bleed over, or if you have to become split in order to put it away, it's wise then to broach your
own issues with the client before you attempt to help them so they can know where your static is
coming from and don't think it has to do with them and their issues.
So it's a way of self- cleansing and self-unifying before you begin to work. The reason I call it the
possibility sphere is because it has, in its emptiness, possibility. In a way, it says to the client, because of
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its emptiness -- and it's a welcoming emptiness -- it suggests to the client, "Here, your possibilities can
be realized. Here, it's possible for you to risk. Here, living is possible." But it does not say, "Here,
anything is possible," because that moves to magic. So the possibility has to be connected to the truth of
their own bubblings and longings that rise from their authentic center, and not the possibilities of
escape, of easy transformation, easy out, avoidance of their own self.
Also, the emptiness cannot be the emptiness of a desert where there are no nutrients, because then
that's the emptiness that says, "I don't care what you do." That's the emptiness of indifference. Here, it's
the emptiness that says, "Whatever comes out of you will be something that will come back to you from
the setting, from the other people in the group, that will meet your needs." So, in a sense, when the
person is in the possibility sphere, they're surrounded in it, so they're not in a void but they're in
something potentially fertile. Some people think of a void as fertile; other people think of a void as
stripped of meaning.
So the seat or the platform of the possibility sphere depends on a "yea" saying to life. There's a
philosophical standpoint in it. And without that yea saying to life, there could be a nay saying to it. So
the possibility sphere could include the person's demise, and that I don't include in what I call the
possibility sphere. It's fertile. It's saying yes to life. So the metaphor, when I think of the encircling of the
possibility sphere and the person is within it, it's uterine, in the same way that the uterus presents the
environment for the fertilized egg to realize its possibilities and become the human being. This is the
same thing.
So you as the therapist in this kind of work are a midwife in a way, if not a carrier of the uterus or the
presenter of the uterus. And in the same way that the uterus doesn't talk about death, it says yes to life
-- that’s something in the personality, in your own belief system, has got to embrace that. Even though
it's empty, it's not nihilistic. So you must be tuned in, then, in order to make the possibility sphere
function, to your own positive voice and to the client's positive voice.
I don't know whether I should talk for a moment . . . I think you know enough about the positive
voice/negative voice? Maybe you don't. Maybe I should talk a little on that. If you're going to lead your
structure to a good end, and that's the contract you make, and that is implicit in the possibility sphere,
you've got to know the sound of the positive voice and the sound of the negative voice, in both yourself
and in the client. The negative voice in people says to them, "You're no good. The world is no good. This
won't help. Everything is meaningless. Give up. Why don't you kill yourself and die." And that voice, if
followed through to the end, would lead to passivity or inactivity, non-connectedness, non- relatedness,
no meaning, madness, and death. And the positive voice is exactly the opposite. It says, "You're good.
The world is good. There is hope. There is a way. I will help you." And that leads toward connected to
the self, connected to others, activity, meaning, hope, and life.
The paradox in all of this is that both those voices lead toward communion with the cosmos, because
the basic function of all action and all existence is communion with God and communion with the
cosmos. The negative voice leads to communion with the cosmos in that if you follow it to its ultimate,
you'll be dead, and you will commune with the cosmos literally because you'll become fused with it. You
will be undifferentiated as an individual. So that you'll get literal communion with the cosmos.
The positive voice leads to communion with the cosmos because you've connected to ultimate meaning;
however, you have to do that at the price of individuation. Some people want literal merging and
communion with the cosmos and fusion with it and lose their individuation in the process. And if you
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follow the positive voice, you remain individuated, you remain a single, finite, differentiated self,
differentiated from the cosmos, but related symbolically to the cosmos. You're one symbolically with the
cosmos but not literally. In that way, they're both the same, except one is literal and the other is
symbolic fusion.
Now, the possibility sphere says, "Life is possible and communion with the cosmos while alive is
possible." So it doesn't go the negative route. It offers the positive route kind of communion. And it's
important that you have that stance within you because not knowing that difference or not having
decided on that difference, you could help people to do their realization through dying, which is what
some religions talk about. So it's a graspable, saleable religious concept. They're selling it over in Iran all
the time. "Fulfill your destiny through death."
So the possibility sphere means that you will be . . . well, here's where I exaggerate a little bit and where
it gets a little bit dangerous because there are times when someone is working, and I do more than offer
the possibility sphere. I bring in my own personal thing, so I haven't grown enough yet to stay
dispassionate. There's a part of me that identifies with the offering of the yea saying to life in that I
become a warrior for sanity and life and I feel I have to go to battle against the forces of madness. So I
think what I'm saying is that it's not such a good idea to have as high a commitment as I do for life
because sometimes you want the healing more than they do. Then you're in the countertransference
madness.
But I think there has to be a fair amount of commitment to life so that when you're dealing with a
seriously disturbed person who is on the brink of going mad or dead, you are strong enough to face the
hatred and the murder that is going to come your way and still offer the possibility sphere in return. You
have to be deeply committed -- if you're going to work with disturbed people -- to this life.
Q: The client wants you to be the perfect love or the perfect nurturance or protection. You're making
the distinction of life.
Yeah. This is what we were talking about before, the whole transference thing. See, what we're going to
extend them is the possibility sphere and provide them the atmosphere within which they're going to
become themselves, but the therapist should never take the position of being the source and the origin
of the human force, but at best a channel or a traffic cop for it. We're going to direct the traffic in the
room so that the healing will come through the other people, and not through you.
If you take the position of extending the possibility sphere and being the source of the healing, you're
going to become God, and the transference will get intense, that it's your persona through which the
healing comes rather than you are at best a medium through which the healing comes. That's the
burden you were talking about, where you have to become God, and that's impossible. That means you
cannot be your true, imperfect, finite self.
As a therapist, when transference comes your way and there's so much healing going on, there's such a
big temptation and seduction to be inflated and made aggrandized by the client's view of you. It's an
enormous temptation, because they are going to make you feel great, wonderful, marvelous, and they'll
want to make you the God . . . there's a tendency in them to want to put you in that place. But then
everything will be out of balance. You'll no longer be two human beings working toward healing. There
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will be the healed and the wounded. And then they think they're going to have to become as perfect as
they perceive you to be.
It's a big danger. Do not say, "I have this power," but rather, "I can present an atmosphere in which you
can come in touch with it." In myself, I'm not the ideal mother, I'm not the ideal father, but I'm an expert
in creating the setting and in seeing to it that something gets provided. Yes. Yes.
I want to talk a little bit more about the counter- transference screen that happens in that possibility
sphere. The possibility sphere that you're extending really is a part of your personality. So that means
your body and your psyche and your consciousness is the tool in the same way a dancer's body is a tool
or a singer's voice is a tool. So your own psyche is the tool that you have to develop. So that means your
hearing and your seeing and your thinking surrounds them. Another paradoxical element is that in this
emptiness of the possibility sphere are also potential paradigms so that you're not simply depending on
your intuition when they are filling the emptiness with themselves, but you're depending on frames of
reference. So you need to develop cognitive frames. As they speak, they should light up things on the
switchboard of your mind. "This fits here, this fits there, this fits there." And in the possibility sphere,
you also have to develop -- or I've learned to develop -- a very quick short-term memory of phrases and
actions and energy. They say something and I make a quick . . . I remember it. And I remember it
because I hook it into areas of meaning. "This has to do with early childhood. This has to do with abuse.
This has to do with sexuality." I hook it with something. So as they talk I'm creating this short-term
memory.
Also what I use when I'm listening is, as I hear them, I convert, I think, on some level, what they say into
scenes. I start seeing what they're saying. So when they describe a past event or something, I'm making
a picture. I'm not merely hearing the words. I'm started to see the people they're talking about, whether
they're tall or short or where they are in relation to each other. So I create a three- dimensional
representation. As they are talking about it, they are doing things in some fashion.
Now, on the countertransference part, since I've offered to this person this emptiness, and it's really
part of me, I'm allowing them to play on my sensitivity. So that here's me and here's all my life meaning,
and I'm giving them a kind of a miniature replica of that, that's not so connected to me but available to
them. So if they say something that's frightening, I feel frightened, and I can feel the quality there
because they're playing it inside my consciousness. If they're happy about something, a part of me is
happy with them and knows what it's about. If they're sad, a part of me, etc.. . . So I'm feeling along with
them.
So they're playing on the ends of my own affect system. But I've got it clearly demarcated from me.
Otherwise, I'd be just wrecked. I've got to learn all that sensitivity but put this thing out here, and still
keep my boundary. This is in their service, and this is my life. So when they say one thing or another and
I've got these screens going, I know what they're talking about because I can feel it, what effect they're
having on me. You can, when you develop this same tool, know how to construct the figures that they're
going to need for the negative figure or the positive figure, whatever, because they're making you, in
your possibility sphere reactivity, feel like the ones they're talking about. If they say, "My father really
loved me," and they look at you in a way, and you can feel the quality of the love their father had for
them because they're pulling it up in you and that moment, you know exactly what that father has to
look like. If they say, "I hated my father because . . ." and they look at you in their transference, you can
feel the way that father beat the shit out of them because they are creating it in you.
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In fact, the more disturbed patient you have, the more likely they are going to make you, whether you
like it or not, the characters in their play. They'll provoke you; it's as if they handed you the script and
they force your mouth to say the lines. Again, that's dependent on the ego diminishment. With people
who are well intact, the ego somehow keeps a shield from the nuclear energy getting to you and
blasting you away, blasting away your own ego. But if you're with enough disturbed people, they can get
you to be the hated people that they knew in the past. And your ESP will work that way. I don't know
how they communicate that sort of stuff to you, but I've had that happen with me. And that's when
things get a little uncanny. You start to know what they're going to do or what they want because
they've made you that person.
Again, the more disturbed egos you have, the more your own ego has to be strong enough not to get
swept away in the counter- transference, to either want to kill them, as they're fearful that you may
want to do, or. . . . I had one woman who was in such incredible need, down in Atlanta, she was talking
about being an infant and in an incubator. She was a woman who never grew to full size. Her body was
so frail. It so touched me that I became her mother. She needed an ideal mother but I didn't want her to
choose a woman in the group. I wanted to grow breasts and I felt I could practically lactate, and then I
saw I had my own magical mother inside me because I saw that it went past my ego and all my madness
about being a mother replacement. Am I making sense?
This is why it's important to keep it out here and keep yourself here. Then you can feel all those things
and say, "Pick someone to role-play that." And you know when they're role playing it if they're doing it
correctly because you can feel what they did you and how you would act under the force of their impact
on you. If they put it on you so strongly, you start to be it.
Q: And then they're able to respond to the way in which you hold that, handle that.
That's if I stayed only in a one-to-one relationship. Not being in a one-to-one and having a group, I can
know how to give that role over to someone. Or, if they're not ready to go into the structure, you could
say, "You're doing such and such to me, and I can feel like you're making me feel. If I didn't know any
better, I'd start shouting at you, maybe want to smack the hell out of you. I'm not going to do that. I
don't really feel that, but you're doing something to provoke that in me."
Q: So your countertransference feelings are the correspondent to their projection . . . in more classical
language.
Right. And then we know how the role-players should act. Then we just put that out there, instead of
having it all go on in the transference, we bring it out into the figures and take it off the relationship.
Q: Transference, the relationship.
We don't encourage the intensification of transference.. I sometimes think the transference neurosis is
not healable. It may not be curable. When an analyst pulls everything to them so that seem to be
perceived (or even be) the mother, the father, the grandmother, the dog, the neighbor . . .then they try
to unload that at the end of the therapy in "working it through." I wonder if sometimes it can’t be done.
People may stay wedded to their analyst forever. So rather than encourage the intensification of
transference on the therapist, we disperse it. We use transference and know that it happens, and we
start teaching clients how to bop it into their conscious selection of having other people role-play those
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figures rather than see it all as if it were really happening with the therapist. If the therapist is
encouraging regression, it's hard to climb back out of it. So we don't allow the person to regress. We say,
"You're in a structure. You stay in charge."
So we strengthen the ego. That's why you really have to assess the ego strength, whether people know
they're in a structure or they're in a regression. I always try to stay with the person in the position of
saying, "I know I'm in a structure and I know that this person is only role-playing such and such. And I
know I'm not the infant. I know I'm feeling like an infant." So we make that distinction. Some people
want to become the infant. And we don't permit that. So a structure is not a regression.
So a lot is going on in this possibility sphere. It means you have to keep your ego clear and their ego
clear as well. Otherwise, there would be a disappearance, a merging and a fusion could happen.
Q: Person losing themselves in a structure. Don't know whether to interrupt in some way, designating,
"This is a structure, etc."
I would like to look at that again. There's a very important distinction. There are times when people are
very deeply in it and they are clearly in a structure, and there are other times and other kinds of signals
when they're out of the structure and they're in some kind of regression. And that has to be addressed.
I'll try to think of what those differences are. That'll be whether people are in structure or in regression.
And some people see structure as regression; some people see structure as prayer. I want to talk about
that, too. They're praying for something; it's their wish list. I think I've covered pretty much what I
wanted to in the possibility sphere.
Questions?
Q: Overwhelmed with feeling for where the person is at. Does that automatically mean that's an issue I
need to work on? Separate out?
My first inclination would be to say yes. Looking at myself, when I've had that, my first inclination is that
that got past my possibility sphere and got to me. Yeah. There are times when you might get teary . . .
but you used the word overwhelmed. It is overwhelmed. It says over the ego. The ego got swamped.
Q: Like saying, "Boy, this is really having a lot of impact on me to go on"?
Then what you're doing is clearing up. You're doing that thing that I said before. You put yourself aside.
You say, "But I will go on," and you're clearing up.
Q: The uterus also protects the mother.
Yes, there is a part of the mother that feels infected sometimes, and it treats the baby as an infection, as
a foreign object.
Q: Like Mel Brooks' explanation of why women get morning sickness: When they realize there's another
living creature inside of them, they puke.
Yeah. It's the same kind of thing. We can't become the uterus. It's just this little thing we extend. Yeah.
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Q: The other side of that coin is, "Could I be so cold that I don't respond to. . . ."
Yeah, we've got to stay human and caring and still say yes to life and still have a certain amount of love,
our own human love in it. That's what else I was going to talk about. I think some distance is okay.
Because if you get too engrossed, you won't be able to do all the other tasks. The other thing I work
with, and that's the last word I want to say: If you stay enough in tune with your own positive voice, so
that you can say honestly and realistically, "This can work out, at least in this structure." And I depend
on that. Sometimes you can go into the wilderness and still . . . not that you have the answer, but you
get the feeling, this can work out. And that carries you. They will sometimes seduce you or encourage
you to feel just as hopeless as they feel, and you can feel that. And you say, "My God, let's get out of
here. Let's close the shop." But to still hold on. That's where you have to be a warrior for sanity and life
and say, "This can work out, and I'm willing to go to that extreme with you."
Q: Al, are you saying that in the moment I begin to feel hopeless, I am in that moment experiencing
what the original parent was experiencing? No, in that moment you might feel their hopelessness that
they want you to feel with them, and maybe feel guilty or responsible for producing it. Yeah, that's true.
Are you them at that moment? Because I think it'll bop. Sometimes you'll feel what they feel, and
sometimes you'll feel what the figures they're talking about would feel.
Q: Could you give clues about how you go about knowing which is which for yourself?
I hadn't thought about that. Let me take a moment. Yeah. Sometimes they are telling the story and not
necessarily looking at you, and then you'll feel like them. And sometimes they'll do something at you
that will provoke a response. So there's a reactivity where they're trying to get you to feel something
and you can feel the pressure. Other times, you'll simply just identify with them. I have to put that in the
talk, because you have to be on both sides of that. Be able to see things as they see them and feel like
the figures that they want or hate or dread. You can be in any one of those places. So you, at any
moment, can be in touch with their soul or to be the negative figure or the ideal figure.
Q: There are three possibilities there.
Yeah. What I would like to do in the next little exercise. . . . Let's take just a short break. I want to test
the feeling of the possibility sphere with each other. When you sit in the presence of one another, how
do you feel? Do you feel constricted by being with that person? Or do you feel enhanced? Just to get the
sense of it. And then give each other feedback. Everyone's possibility sphere will have dimension to it.
You may give off messages that say, "I only want you to like me. Please don't get angry with me because
I can't handle it." And you may give off messages like that.
Or you might give off messages, "Don't do anything sexual, because I will be uneasy." Or something. I
think you might get the sense of that. If one plays the client. We'll do that as a first exercise, just to see
what kind of thing you give out. We'll spend maybe ten minutes on that and then hear from each other
what kind of possibilities you feel in the presence of the other person. Do you feel safe? Do you feel yes
said to you? Do you feel you have to hide a piece of yourself? Do you feel open? And maybe begin to
look at what's going on inside you as you present it.
How do you turn it on in yourself? How do you locate where it is, and how do you turn it on?
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(Break)
I'd like you to read this thing in connection with the possibility sphere. I was considering reading it aloud
to you, but that would take some time. I don't know if you would want to hear that or not. This thing,
basic security and connectedness. This is a yea-saying kind of thing.
Q: If you could read it and then expand and make comments. . . .
Okay. Basic security derives from connectedness, connectedness to the self, to others, and to the
cosmos. The connectedness to the self develops out of the earlier connectedness to the other two. We
are connected to the cosmos because we are of the cosmos, constructed out of the matter and material
of the cosmos. We are made of elements that were constructed in the furnace of the stars. All the
elements of the universe were once one, and the singular mass that existed before the Big Bang and
dispersal into space, once all was literally one.
That's the longing that people have for the communion, to me. The longing to go back to the literal
oneness. We have that now somehow inside of each fleck of matter we are made of, each piece of
matter, every electron, every molecule, although separated by vast multiples of space between them
knows innately and intimately its brothers and sisters and all relatives that can be experienced. Each
piece, although now separate, relates and connects across the vast distances in microspace. That also
talks, in a way, about how, even though we're distant from them and we're separated, we can feel them
across the distance. In the possibility sphere, we can feel them. Of course, we have knowledge of each
other in basic ways. Each electron, each nucleus cooperates to create the greater togetherness of the
larger body that will be coming together. That's back to the person and all the parts of the person. We
have to be reminded in that in some way to experience it in a reality once again.
How do we feel connected to ourselves, connected to others, connected to the universe, and feel
whole? Sometimes something happens, and we lose that, and these are ways of reminding us how we
were connected. Also, there are steps for you as structure leaders to use some of these elements to help
people reconnect. When they don't trust this, they might trust this. If they don't trust this, they might
trust that.
So we are reminded of it when we are conceived. When we are conceived, our individual stuff, which
was once totally separated as sperm and egg, each having its own separate identity, joins together to
become a single unity, one although multiple in recent origin, its oneness reminiscent and symbolic of
the singularity of cosmological origin. It's like when people are totally hopeless, if you can help them
come back to when, with ideal parents, each one of them could be born and the sperm and the egg
meet. They might believe in that in they can't believe in something earlier or later.
Q: How are you defining cosmos?
I'm defining it as all that is, literally the entire matter and space of the universe, everything in the
universe, all the stars, all matter. Then another step. We are reminded of it when we are embedded
embryonically in the wall of the universe . . . uterus. Same thing. Our placenta roots bury themselves
deeply in the wall of the uterus, giving us the knowing that we are rightfully there, with a place, with
rootedness and connectedness.
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That's also true in the possibility sphere. They feel they are rightfully there with you, you give them the
same sense of connectedness, of rootedness and rightfulness. Somehow you can transmit some of that.
These are metaphors for you to pick up on. We are reminded of it when we draw life blood and
sustenance into our very interior, through the umbilical cord which is attached to our placental roots.
We are reminded of it when we are bathed in the warmth, comfort, and security of the amniotic fluid
that is created for the satisfaction of the becoming.
When I say that, I am also thinking of the figures that we create that correspond to the needs people
have so that we create a figure that is created for the satisfaction of their becoming. They need a
supporting figure that is created, just as the uterus creates . . . the cells are creating all that the embryo
requires, or the fluids create all the material that cells will be grown from.
We are reminded of it when we feel the walls of the uterus around us in every direction. That's in the
possibility sphere, in the gaze of the parents, in the arms of the parents, in the heart of the parents. By
that, we know that we are in a loving, sustaining container, that we are part of something bigger, that
the bigger things around us lovingly, empowering are growing fruitfulness.
We are reminded of it when we are in the arms of our parents, surrounded with strength, sustenance
and warmth, reminiscent of the walls of the uterus. We are reminded of it when we live in the gaze of
our parents, and our beings are bathed in the warmth and smile of sight fields. Every part of our being is
touched and seen by their sight, and it is good. We are reminded of it when we are permitted to cling to
our parents' flesh, like the clinging fingers of our placental roots. The flesh does not deny our rightful
grasp and entwining limbs.
We are reminded of it when we are comforted during periods of danger and pain, and the parents, the
great ones, support our continued existence against the danger and pain. I put that in capitals, GREAT
ONES, because for children, they make the parents the grand figures. They think of God that way. That's
part, also, of the way people are transferring. And for us to know the difference between that Great One
and ourselves.
We are reminded of it by our own individual memories and symbolic constructions of the experiences
with all that has passed. That's complicated, and I don't know how I can say it. What I'm doing here is
making a symbol, a shift to symbol. First, we have all these experiences, and we have internalized these
experiences as symbols and we can not have to remember all the things that have it somehow in us
now. Our memories and symbols live endlessly within us, and so does the meaning that has been
symbolized endlessly within us. That's talk, really, about the fourth step when we do structures. We
have to get the shift to symbol, not just give them the experience. Our image of ourselves is embedded
in the memories and symbols within us, of the loving, sustaining, permitting sources and roots of life. So
that as people internalize the meaning of structure, they have internalized the ideal figures and they are
now in us, rather than something that has to be sought for outside. And it's in the ego.
By that connectedness to our images and our own memories, we are embedded in our consciousness
and unconsciousness to our life and to the lives that have created and sustained us. By that, we trust the
life-giving force in ourselves and see it in others as well as pass it on to others. By all this, we live in basic
security and connectedness.
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Now, this really starts a new switch. Here I have gotten to the mountaintop of the secure, healed self.
Now, I'm stepping back a minute. Thus, if the supporting, protecting actions of our parents have failed
(as we grew up, they failed), we can remember and trust their arms. So we're working our way back.
Thus, if their arms have failed us, we can remember and trust the gaze. If the gaze has failed, we can
remember and trust the walls of the uterus. If the walls have failed, we can remember and trust the
amniotic fluid. If the amniotic fluid has failed, we can remember and trust the umbilical cord. If the
umbilical cord has failed, we can remember and trust the placental roots. If the placental roots have
failed, we can remember and trust the meaning and merging of conception. If the conception has failed,
we can remember and trust nothing living and must return to trust matter, the ultimate base, or
mother, and trust the relatedness of electrons, protons, nuclei, to never forget the singular origin.
If matter on this level fails, we can remember and trust the singleness with the total cosmos, God, that
was there from the beginning and will be there forever, without end. Thus, while we are alive, we can
search back to whatever platforms we must to find our basic security and connectedness, and it is
always there to be found. That's how we have hope. They can't say, "Nothing, nothing, nothing." There
will always be something to hold onto.
To the exercise. How do we pair off with an uneven number? I guess I'll have to join in. Before we pair
off, think of what you do when you start to be a therapist or you're beginning a therapy session, so that
you can get more conscious of the shifts interiorally that you do when you go from being your everyday
self to being the therapist. And stop to look for some of these things, and feel the beginning of that. And
once you get that set, we'll take a few minutes for you to do that internally. Then we'll pair off. One will
be in the client role and one will be in the therapist role. Then we'll sit with one another just to get the
feel of one another, looking at one another, with no words being passed.
And then the one who is the client position feedback and say what kind of possibilities . . . what was the
shape of the possibility sphere. And the person in the therapist's position say what you felt about the
person, either as they are or what they wanted from you or didn't want from you. Just to get a flavor.
It's almost like it's a little ESP guessing game. You're picking up cues. This is what you'll need in the
beginning of structure, when you start to know what a structure is about. From reading one another.
Q: Speak a little more about what, as the client, I am sensing, looking for, that I'm then going to give
feedback about. When I am being the client.
Think of opening up your most important areas. When you go as a client, you are going because you are
wanting places of pain to be addressed, worked through, or you have confusion, or you need help or
you're blocked. So jump to your troubled places. When you're in touch with those, look at this other
person and see, when you feel those, how you feel about addressing those things with the face and
figure that you're with. What people do is an unconscious censoring of what they'll bring up as the
client. Then you can share with each other what happened. So you'll have as long as you need to sit with
each other and assess these things. First to know you're turned on as a therapist and you're in touch
with your stuff. Then talk to one another about it. And they're going to tell you how safe they feel,
whether there are some areas they don't want to touch and some areas they feel very ready to touch,
whether they feel that your availability or non-availability, whether they get a sense of optimism or a
sense of pessimism or indifference.
So they're reading your possibility sphere. You'll get some kind of information to play with about
yourself. Let's first take a moment for you to see how you go about turning on. What is it that you turn
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on? What is it you do inside when you shift, when you clear? Then we'll switch people to see how that
feels.
© 1961 -2011 Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden-Pesso. All rights reserved.
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